Okay, this might come across as a fairly stupid question, yet I have to know this. Does anyone know what the communicative function of 'the article' is?
For example, if we consider 'must' and 'have to', the communicative function could be 'Talking about obligation'. I need something similar to this for the article, but I can't come up with anything.
Any help is appreciated!
Answer
What is by many considered the primary function of articles is distinguishing between new references (focus, a(n)) on one hand, and references to things that the audience already knows are part of the topic of the utterance on the other (topic, the). With a(n), this thing hasn't been mentioned before; with the, you already know which thing the speaker is referring to. Of course this is a bit of a simplification.
A secondary function of articles is to distinguish between countable and uncountable singular nouns, as in I like beer and I'd like a beer. As such, it functions much like the number one.
Thirdly, there are countless idiomatic expressions using articles.
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